Modern telecommunication systems include heterogeneous mixtures of second, third, and fourth generation (2G, 3G, and 4G) cellular-wireless access technologies, which can be cross-compatible and can operate collectively to provide data communication services. Global Systems for Mobile (GSM) is an example of 2G telecommunications technologies; Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is an example of 3G telecommunications technologies; and Long Term Evolution (LTE), including LTE Advanced, and Evolved High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA+) are examples of 4G telecommunications technologies. The 5G telecommunication technologies are the next generation mobile networks that are designed to combine both an evolution and revolution of the existing LTE/LTE-A mobile networks to provide a much higher connectivity, greater throughput, much lower latency, and ultra-high reliability to support new use cases and applications. Some of mobile devices operating in such telecommunication systems are also capable of operating over Wi-Fi networks for voice, also known as Voice-over-IP (VoIP) and data.
In the LTE network with the Evolved Packet Core (EPC), when a bearer is created for a user equipment (UE) requesting for a service, the 3GPP standard specifies that a Public Data Network (PDN) Gateway (PGW) immediately allocates an Internet Protocol (IP) address for the UE to use for the bearer. While the 3GPP standard does not specify how the PGW determines which IP address to allocate, often a simple method of allocating the next available address is used. While this allocation method was satisfactory for the originally foreseen LTE services, it is already straining with the growth in variety of LTE services. With the expansion of use cases, devices, and services already determined for 5G networks, the current simple method is expected to be inadequate to meet the expected growth.